Resources

Check out our resources section to do a deep dive on the latest electronic design trends, read some success stories, and find out how we can help you make products that are on time, on budget, and easy to manufacture.

Highlights from HIMSS 2019

We really enjoyed attending the HIMSS 2019 Conference in February. It was fun to meet new folks and renew connections with others. Walt Maclay spoke at a well attended “Wearable Devices and Batteries” session. It generated interest in our Universal Health-Sensor Platform and our work on wearable devices.

Thanks to Deborah Borfitz for the interview and featuring our work in her article “Overcoming Battery Power Limitations in Wearable Devices” featured in Battery Power. She covered how the explosive growth in wearable devices has put the battery conundrum front and center for companies in the business of making these pint-sized, often power-hungry technologies.

“The number one problem is we want the battery to last longer and be smaller—or nonexistent,” says Walt Maclay, founder and president of electronic design company Voler Systems. The answer lies not with the batteries themselves but in applying creative workarounds to their limitations, including how data gets transmitted and alternatives to traditional electronic and software components. There’s a well-demonstrated trade-off between energy density and safety with batteries.

The power consumption differential among sensors is huge and choosing the right one for the job is crucial to extending battery life. Voler Systems has a unique universal health sensor platform used for early, pre-production prototyping to quickly see if an intended sensor is a good fit for a device. Multiple sensors can be tried in a test environment with connection to the cloud to narrow the list of options.”

In recent years, new processes have been developed that can manufacture flexible electronics in volume. “Some companies can make the integrated circuits or chips flexible by grinding them down to be very thin, and they can deposit flexible passive components—in fact, an entire electronic circuit can now be made flexible,” said Maclay.